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I can't help laughing cynically at the outrage expressed by US Congressional representative Bobby Rush (D - Illinois) and Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot (christened "Groot" by the always useful Second City Cop blog, which has chronicled her missteps and foibles since she took office, including some rather revealing history).
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush on Thursday condemned images they said depicted Chicago police officers making popcorn, drinking coffee and sleeping on a couch in the congressman’s campaign office while nearby businesses were being looted amid unrest nearly two weeks ago.
The revelation came at an unusual City Hall news conference where the former political enemies stood united, with Rush praising Lightfoot’s leadership and the mayor apologizing to the veteran congressman on behalf of the city.
“That’s a personal embarrassment to me,” Lightfoot said of the scene that played out inside Rush’s Fuller Park political office. “I’m sorry that you and your staff even had to deal with this incredible indignity."
. . .
Lightfoot pledged to hold them accountable for their actions.
“Not one of these officers will be allowed to hide behind the badge and go on and act like nothing ever happened,” she said.
Sounds bad, doesn't it? I wasn't surprised to read it, though. When the Mayor and her city administration spend most of their time bad-mouthing the police (and blaming them for problems largely caused by their elected and appointed administrators), it was no surprise to me that officers would prefer to remain somewhere peaceful rather than risk being publicly pilloried yet again for trying to do their jobs.
However, the story didn't end there. Second City Cop confirms that the officers were assigned to Congressman Rush's office, to protect it after it had been burglarized (presumably by rioters). They weren't sheltering from the riots or ignoring them - they were where they were supposed to be, on duty. As SCC notes, "The officers were wrong in availing themselves of popcorn and coffee that wasn't theirs, but they were ordered to hold that position with no relief and, tactically, no ability to stop hundreds of persons bent on mayhem." Puts a different complexion on the matter, doesn't it?
Now the news media are becoming aware of the real story. For example:
Second City Cop notes, "It was an assigned detail. Rush has been lying his entire life, from the "racial profiling" that didn't happen, to being the insider who set up Fred Hampton. Groot's hatred of the CPD has blinded her to this fact."
I think there's a whole lot more to this case than meets the eye. It looks very much as if Rush and Lightfoot were trying to manufacture more "dirt" with which to smear the Chicago Police Department. I await further developments with interest, and I'll be reading Second City Cop to get the inside story. If you're not familiar with Chicago, and want the lowdown on its crime and law enforcement situation, SCC is the place to go.
Yesterday I wrote that Seattle has abandoned the rule of law. It's allowed protesters to set up an "autonomous zone" in a six-block area of the city, and pulled police out of it. I warned of what was likely to occur - and guess what? It's already happening.
That's what happens when you negate the rule of law. Inevitably, the law of the jungle takes over. It's survival of the fittest and strongest. Bring them food, or be food for them. Chairman Mao said it well: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun". The halfwits who proclaimed the "Autonomous Zone" are re-learning that lesson - and not just about power, either. They're also learning that if you try to help them, the grasshoppers will rob the ants blind.
They want food, do they? I have a suggestion. Let's each of us buy a packet of frozen peas, and transfer the contents to freezer containers so we can use them at our leisure. Then, let's mail the empty frozen-pea packets to the organizers of the Autonomous Zone (or perhaps to our local Antifa branches or Democratic Party offices), with a note reading "No Justice, NO PEAS!" I think we should make that go viral, so they're inundated with empty pea packets. It's no better than they deserve.
What about Seattle's police force? Their city leaders won't allow them to do their job. Therefore, those individual cops who still have a spine, and at least some professional pride, should resign from Seattle PD and take their services to places where it'll be appreciated and properly used. The others should follow the well-known precept of "Lead, follow, or get out of the way". They're not allowed to lead, and they have no effective leader to follow, so they should get out of the way and let citizens defend themselves - because it looks like nobody else is going to do it.
I said yesterday that "I'm a pastor and chaplain, and have my own perspective on what's happening - which does not involve violence unless in defense of my life, family and property." Getting rid of thugs with guns who are threatening me, and refusing to be intimidated into contributing to their support, most certainly falls under that defense, IMHO. I think it's time the good citizens of the "Autonomous Zone", and of Seattle as a whole (at least, those who haven't been brainwashed into abandoning their rights and responsibilities as citizens), banded together to reassert their own authority, and show these idiots where to go. If necessary, assist them to get there.
After that, elect or appoint city and state authorities who'll preserve the rule of law in future. I don't care what you do with the old ones. They're utter failures, and deserve no consideration at all.
Protesters and demonstrators in Seattle have set up what they're calling the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone around the 11th Precinct police building in Seattle. They've even produced this map of the "liberated" area (clickit to biggit).
As the labels on the map make clear, this is nothing more or less than a far-left-wing, progressive, communist-inspired project. The labels are typical of communist propaganda throughout the world over the past century or more. They leave little doubt as to the ideology behind this farce. It's Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" writ large, on the streets of one of America's largest cities.
Of course, that city - Seattle - is so far left of center in its politics that it's arguably no longer American in its governance and outlook. The occupiers of the "Autonomous Zone" appear to agree. This notice appears on one of the barriers blockading entrance to the zone:
Please imagine, for a moment, that you're a business owner or resident inside the boundaries of that zone. Suddenly your customers and suppliers no longer have free access to your business; suddenly your right to the peaceful enjoyment of your residence is interrupted by radical activists who are controlling entrance to and exit from the zone. You may face demands for access to your facilities at any time, and any refusal may draw accusations that you're "racist" or "reactionary" or (perish the thought!) "conservative". You may be expected to "support the people" by donating supplies to the "masses", whether you like it or not. Refusal is unlikely to be well received.
Worst of all, to my mind, is that local police deliberately and openly abandoned their own precinct building, opening the way for the radicals to take over. I doubt very much whether police took this decision on their own initiative. I'm pretty sure it was imposed on them by city administrators. Despite claims that the precinct will remain staffed, it's now clear that those staff are not using their own headquarters building, which has been taken over by the mob. Police are patrolling from mobile staging areas instead, and appear to be voluntarily remaining outside the self-declared "Autonomous Zone". What this means for you, if you live and/or work inside that zone, is that you can no longer rely on police protection or assistance. You're on your own.
This means that Seattle has effectively abandoned the rule of law within city limits.
... the mechanism, process, institution, practice, or norm that supports the equality of all citizens before the law, secures a nonarbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power. Arbitrariness is typical of various forms of despotism, absolutism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism.
. . .
In general, the rule of law implies that the creation of laws, their enforcement, and the relationships among legal rules are themselves legally regulated, so that no one—including the most highly placed official—is above the law. The legal constraint on rulers means that the government is subject to existing laws as much as its citizens are. Thus, a closely related notion is the idea of equality before the law, which holds that no “legal” person shall enjoy privileges that are not extended to all and that no person shall be immune from legal sanctions. In addition, the application and adjudication of legal rules by various governing officials are to be impartial and consistent across equivalent cases, made blindly without taking into consideration the class, status, or relative power among disputants.
Those conditions no longer apply in Seattle. There, it's now patently obvious that:
Not all citizens are equal under the law. Left-wing protesters and agitators are being handled with kid gloves. Try mounting a right-wing protest, for any cause from free speech, to pro-Second-Amendment, to outright racism like the Ku Klux Klan, and you'll doubtless get handled rather differently. Don't believe me? Why don't you try it, while the rest of us watch? Pass the popcorn, please . . .
Power is used arbitrarily, particularly as regards policing. The police are no longer "protecting and serving" everybody. They're doing so selectively. If you're in a zone controlled by the politically correct, you can expect little, if any, help from law enforcement authorities and officers. Seattle PD's motto is officially "Service, Pride, Dedication". As far as the "Autonomous Zone" is concerned, I see from them little service, nothing to be proud of, and dedication only to surrendering to the mob. It's hard to see how any self-respecting officer can remain in the employ of so pusillanimous an agency.
The Mayor and city administration are abandoning their duty of care towards the city under their control, and pandering instead to pressure groups and extremist ideologies. Those who don't fall into "politically correct" categories are no longer welcome in Seattle. They're on their own.
In a properly administered state, the Governor and/or state authorities would have intervened long since to protect and uphold the rule of law, and ensure equality before the law for all citizens of the city. That's unlikely to happen in Washington, where left-wing progressive politics dominate the state government. The powers that be will adopt a snooty, high-toned, morally bankrupt perspective on the whole thing, and abdicate their responsibilities.
I'm fairly sure this won't be the only such "Autonomous Zone" set up in US cities. Anywhere the radicals can expect compliance from city authorities, they'll try to do likewise. Those opposed to them, or those who object to their businesses and property being turned into political pawns, are going to find themselves S.O.L. as far as the authorities are concerned. It goes along with the "Defund the Police" and "Abolish the Police" narratives currently being spouted by the radicals. By excluding police from "Autonomous Zones", they hope to demonstrate that they're not needed. They may not be needed by the radicals, but they'll sure be missed by those the radicals intimidate, oppress and rob!
Of course, this will only accelerate the inevitable backlash. Don't believe me? Aesop spelled it out yesterday evening in relation to the "Abolish the Police" movement, but what he said applies just as well to radical "Autonomous Zones" (run, as they are and will be, by the same people that want to get rid of law enforcement).
Since ever, the whole thing is a Left-wing con job, exactly like advertising.
Create the need for the otherwise needless; then meet the new "need".
They've just taken ads for dishsoap and popcorn makers to their logical political extreme.
It's a riff on the Mafia's "protection" racket: "That's a nice society you have there; be a real shame if it suddenly burned down."
The only answer to that is to shoot the "salesmen"; and then hunt down and exterminate the guy who sent the salesmen, and all their minions, to the last man, and last child.
Nothing less will suffice.
The Left, whether they realize it or not, is setting the table for an existential war of survival, down to the last side standing.
It's a recipe for civil war on a biblical Armageddon scale. Everyone's families and entire lifestyle are the chips in that game.
Kill all they send. Then find and destroy the nest. First one to go ugliest the fastest wins.
Any half measures are a recipe for self-destruction. Dresden and Hiroshima were a template. Second place prize is a body bag.
What we're all witnessing daily right now is the Left's Useful Idiots trying to completely upend civilization, to suit their own ends.
Half of them think they can win. The other half would rather burn everything down to try, knowing they cannot win, and not caring anyways.
This is logic via Lucifer: "If I cannot rule everything, I'll burn it all down."
The answer to that, as ever, comes out of the barrel of a gun, and at the point of sword and spear.
This is my greatest fear right now. The more radicals on one side push the limits, the closer they get to the brink, the more the other side will become radicalized and push right back, raising the stakes, "upping the ante" until there's no alternative but to go all in - or lose. That's what's behind terrorism, the ultimate expression of radicalism. It's what we saw on 9/11, but written (so far) in political slogans and biased, one-sided actions rather than in the large-scale shedding of blood. Can it stay that way?
Historically, it hasn't. Historically, extremism has always led to counter-extremism. I think that's what we're seeing right now in the USA. I'm reliably informed that many local movements are forming and organizing right now. They're taking extreme pains to remain "under the radar", not using traceable or interceptable communications, being very careful and selective about whom they trust, and making plans that are not discussed publicly. Some have progressed to the point of coordinating their plans with other groups, through very carefully vetted channels. I won't be surprised to see regional and national networks forming, in due course.
I'm not part of any of those groups. I'm a pastor and chaplain, and have my own perspective on what's happening - which does not involve violence unless in defense of my life, family and property. However, some of those involved are former (and still trusted) colleagues, so I hear a few things from time to time. I'm very worried by what I'm hearing.
I've seen war from the inside. I've been under fire, and I've fired on others. I've been wounded ... and I've inflicted my share of wounds. I've picked up the dead, and the pieces of the dead.
Those aren't the worst aspects of violent conflict. To me, the worst is what it does to the human psyche. You become dehumanized. Your enemies are no longer people - they're objects, things, targets. You aren't shooting at John, whose mother is ill, and who's missing his girlfriend terribly, and who wants to marry her as soon as he can get home to do so. You're shooting at that enemy over there, the one who'll surely 'do unto you' unless you 'do unto him' first. He's not a human being. He's a 'gook'. He's 'the enemy'. He's a thing rather than a person. It's easier to shoot a thing than it is a person.
. . .
You no longer think of civilians as such. They're in enemy territory, or known to be sympathetic to the enemy: therefore, they're 'things', suspects, never to be trusted, never to be treated objectively or with anything other than the forced, mandatory legal definition of 'decency' imposed by your superiors . . . and even that becomes flexible when those superiors aren't around to monitor what you're doing.
. . .
That's the bitter fruit that extremism always produces. It's done so throughout history. There are innumerable examples of how enemies have become 'things'. It's Crusaders versus Saracens, Cavaliers versus Roundheads, Yankees versus Rebels, doughboys versus Krauts . . . us versus them, for varying values of 'us' and 'them'.
. . .
And in the end, the bodies lying in the ruins, and the blood dripping onto our streets, and the weeping of those who've lost loved ones . . . they'll all be the same. History is full of them. When it comes to the crunch, there are no labels that can disguise human anguish. People will suffer in every land, in every community, in every faith . . . and they'll turn to what they believe in to make sense of their suffering . . . and most of them will raise up the next generation to hate those whom they identify as the cause of their suffering . . . and the cycle will go on, for ever and ever, until the world ends.
We cannot 'kill them all and let God sort them out' ... There are too many of 'them' to kill them all, just as 'they' can never kill all of 'us' ... We cannot kill our way out of the dilemma of being human, with all the tragedy that entails.
May God have mercy on us all.
I fear greatly that unless the extremists on both sides come to their senses, those words may yet prove prophetic in these tragically dis-United States in which we live.
Peter
EDITED TO ADD: It seems that yesterday evening, Tucker Carlson basically agreed with what I've said here about the threat from extremists. See for yourself.
I have no problem accepting that this country's law enforcement functions have overstepped the mark on many occasions. I've written about some of them in these pages, as regular readers will know, and I support holding officers and agencies accountable when they cross the line. It's also undeniable that American policing has often been about a one-sided enforcement of laws that were designed to benefit some parts of society, but not others. As Matt Taibbi points out:
Basically we have two systems of enforcement in America, a minimalist one for people with political clout, and an intrusive one for everyone else. In the same way our army in Vietnam got in trouble when it started searching for ways to quantify the success of its occupation, choosing sociopathic metrics like “body counts” and “truck kills,” modern big-city policing has been corrupted by its lust for summonses, stops, and arrests. It’s made monsters where none needed to exist.
Because they’re constantly throwing those people against walls, writing them nuisance tickets, and violating their space with humiliating searches (New York in 2010 paid $33 million to a staggering 100,000 people strip-searched after misdemeanor charges), modern cops correctly perceive that they’re hated. As a result, many embrace a “warrior” ethos that teaches them to view themselves as under constant threat.
This is why you see so many knees on heads and necks, guns drawn on unarmed motorists, chokeholds by the thousand, and patterns of massive overkill everywhere ... Police are trained to behave like occupiers, which is why they increasingly dress like they’ve been sent to clear houses in Mosul and treat random motorists like potential car-bombers ... senior officers value police who make numbers more than they fear outrage from residents in their districts. The incentives in this system are wrong in every direction.
The current protests are likely to inspire politicians to think the other way, but it’s probably time to reconsider what we’re trying to accomplish with this kind of policing. In upscale white America drug use is effectively decriminalized, and Terry stops, strip searches, and “quality of life” arrests are unknowns. The country isn’t going to heal as long as everyone else gets a knee in the neck.
Despite Taibbi's undeniable points, anyone with even the most basic understanding of human nature and human interaction will realize that police are necessary. There's a not insignificant proportion of humanity that prefers a criminal lifestyle, and lives it out of choice, not out of necessity. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. Therefore, current calls to abolish or de-fund police are beyond stupid. They ignore reality.
If you're not convinced of that, try working for a few days inside one of America's prisons. Deprived of their opportunity to prey on other citizens, what do the incarcerated criminals do? They prey on each other, and on the officers tasked with keeping them behind bars. There's a lot more crime inside prison walls than outside them, because when criminals are brought together in a small, concentrated space like that, they influence and exacerbate each others' worst tendencies. You could call it a "pressure-cooker" environment. I should know. I spent years as a chaplain, both part-time and full-time, trying to help prison inmates. I've written about it at some length.
In the process, I learned the hard way what works, and what doesn't. I'm here to tell you that appeasement, kind words and wishful thinking don't help as long as those incarcerated aren't willing to change.
There's a group in Minneapolis calling themselves MPD 150. They advocate for the replacement of that city's police force with what one could describe as "community self-policing". See for yourself. (Click the image for a larger view.)
Their agenda, their manifesto, is utterly ridiculous to anyone who has any real-world understanding and experience of criminals. I quote:
The transition to a police-free Minneapolis will require immediate measures to limit the harm routinely inflicted by the police in their normal functioning and steps to address the underlying causes of distress. First responder responsibility and on-site authority in crisis situations, public spaces and schools will be transferred to parties prepared to interact sympathetically and respectfully with the people. Social service functions will be relocated in community-based settings. Military equipment will be sequestered. The police are tasked with enforcing austerity – the extraction of resources and resilience from communities for the benefit of the rich – and controlling people’s attempts to survive, resist or self-medicate under its impact. Dismantling the police will require reallocating their budget and assets to support real solutions to community desperation: good, well-paying jobs, affordable housing, healthy food, empowering education, accessible health care, removal of toxins, etc. Ending the brutal police system is, by necessity, a program for a more just and resilient city.
That's so daft as to be laughable, if it weren't so serious.
"First responder responsibility and on-site authority in crisis situations, public spaces and schools will be transferred to parties prepared to interact sympathetically and respectfully with the people." Oh, yeah? You're a first responder, confronted with a couple of muggers armed with knives. They want to get away with their loot. Kindly explain how you're going to "interact sympathetically and respectfully" with them. While you're telling us, I'll be selling tickets to watch your "interaction". I reckon it'll be a smash hit (literally) on pay-per-view TV.
"The police are tasked with enforcing austerity – the extraction of resources and resilience from communities for the benefit of the rich – and controlling people’s attempts to survive, resist or self-medicate under its impact." Tell that to the average police officer and watch them fall over laughing. "Extract resources and resilience"? "Benefit the rich"? No, not in the least. They're there to stop criminals making themselves rich at your expense! As for "self-medication" . . . great excuse for being a drug addict, isn't it? And when you drive under the influence of those drugs, and kill someone in your zonked-out state, you should be treated with sympathy, instead of as the criminal you are . . . right?
"real solutions to community desperation: good, well-paying jobs, affordable housing, healthy food, empowering education, accessible health care, removal of toxins, etc." I seem to recall that Minneapolis, like most cities of its ilk, had a lot more of those when the city was governed by people who understood the reality of where money comes from. It comes from businesses and individuals offering something to sell that people want to buy. From those sales comes salaries and wages for employees, taxes for the city, state and country, and all the other means needed for a community to sustain and develop itself. Take away those sales and all the economic activity that flows from them, and all you have left is wishful thinking. That's not economically sustainable, no matter how much you might prefer otherwise.
I won't bother going into more examples. These people have no idea about reality - or, rather, they've painted a mental picture of their own rainbows-and-unicorn-farts mental reality, and they're trying to superimpose it upon a physical reality that doesn't in any way match their delusions. I'll leave you to read MPD 150's "10 Action Ideas for Building a Police-Free Future" for yourself - if you can stomach it. It's not worth your time.
Yes, American law enforcement agencies are all too often flawed, with policies and procedures that frequently ignore Sir Robert Peel's fundamental principles for policing. They were the foundation for British law enforcement in the 19th century, and I think offer a perspective that would deal with most of the problems we encounter today. Sadly, even in Britain, their birthplace, they are today honored far more in the breach than in the observance.
The nine principles were as follows:
To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary, of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
I think we'd be far better advised to reintroduce and inculcate the Peelian Principles into American policing, rather than seek to abolish it. Yes, that includes "demilitarizing" our police. That should never have happened, and it remains a very serious problem. Take away the weapons of war from law enforcement. That's not their job. If things are bad enough, criminally speaking, that they have to have them, then we don't need police to deal with them - we need the military. The two functions are distinct from each other, with completely different mindsets and approaches, and should not overlap. If they do, we end up with police who behave like armed occupiers rather than peace officers - and that will put us straight back into the mess we're in right now.
It seems that the organizing effort behind the current, allegedly "spontaneous" riots is extensive, well-planned, and very well coordinated and equipped. More and more evidence is coming to light. As just one example, here's part of their instructions, dropped by a riot organizer and publicized on Twitter. Click the image for a larger view.
Note that every page has to be initialed by recipients, and strict discipline is imposed on them. I ran that image past my law enforcement contacts in a few states and cities. Several replied that they'd seen the same sort of thing in their areas. One pointed out that the handout shown above was 26 pages long, and that enough other pages had been found in various places (mislaid, or on the person of arrested organizers) to reconstruct almost the whole document. The radio frequencies and encryption used by the riot coordinators are also known by now, and interceptions are happening in real time. There's a massive effort underway to coordinate intelligence and information, in the hope that this will lead to a crackdown on those responsible. It can't happen too soon for me!
Be aware that much of the news about these riots is false. Many in the mainstream media are deliberately tailoring their output to reflect the "party line", shooting TV footage from specific angles to maximize the social justice perspective and minimize the thuggery. Quotes are selective, images unfavorable to the politically correct narrative are simply not used, and reporting is biased in the extreme.
I'll give you just one example of biased reporting. Here's a headline from BET (Black Entertainment Television) yesterday:
early Monday morning during a protest for Breonna Taylor.
Sounds terrible, doesn't it? How could those brutal, heartless police kill such a wonderful man? Well . . . turns out the reality was rather different, as Fox 19 reported (also yesterday).
You'll find other reports out there. They agree that at least two surveillance cameras, at different businesses, showed Mr. McAtee firing at police before they returned fire and killed him. Compare and contrast the two headlines. Which sounds closer to that reality? Which report is more accurate? (By the way, the same information was available to both outlets before they published their articles. Note what BET left out!)
The problem is, most BET viewers and readers will never see another report from a different perspective. They'll be outraged by what they perceive - what has been implicitly portrayed - as police brutality. This, I suggest, is precisely the effect BET journalists and editors are trying to achieve.
I wouldn't trust a single report about the rioting in the mainstream media. I'd check, double-check and triple-check everything, using input from all sides of the political and media spectrum, before making up my mind. News - accurate news - is too important to be left to journalists and editors, who have all too often proved to be biased, dishonest and corrupt.
Savagery is spreading with lightning speed across the United States, with murderous assaults on police officers and civilians and the ecstatic annihilation of businesses and symbols of the state. Welcome to a real civilization-destroying pandemic...
. . .
This pandemic of civil violence is more widespread than anything seen during the Black Lives Matter movement of the Obama years, and it will likely have an even deadlier toll on law enforcement officers than the targeted assassinations we saw from 2014 onward. It’s worse this time because the country has absorbed another five years of academically inspired racial victimology. From Ta-Nehisi Coates to the New York Times’s 1619 project, the constant narrative about America’s endemic white supremacy and its deliberate destruction of the “black body” has been thoroughly injected into the political bloodstream.
Facts don’t matter to the academic victimology narrative. Far from destroying the black body, whites are the overwhelming target of interracial violence. Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations (excluding interracial homicide, which is also disproportionately black-on-white). That works out to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites. Whites committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimization, or 91,470 felonious assaults on blacks. Blacks are less than 13 percent of the national population.
If white mobs were rampaging through black business districts, assaulting passersby and looting stores, we would have heard about it on the national news every night. But the black flash mob phenomenon is grudgingly covered, if at all, and only locally.
The national media have been insisting on the theme of the allegedly brutal Minneapolis police department. They said nothing as black-on-white robberies rose in downtown Minneapolis late last year, along with savage assaults on passersby. Why are the Minneapolis police in black neighborhoods? Because that’s where violent crime is happening, including shootings of two-year-olds and lethal beatings of 75-year-olds. Just as during the Obama years, the discussion of the allegedly oppressive police is being conducted in the complete absence of any recognition of street crime and the breakdown of the black family that drives it.
Once the violence began, any effort to “understand” it should have stopped, since that understanding is inevitably exculpatory. The looters are not grieving over the stomach-churning arrest and death of George Floyd; they are having the time of their lives. You don’t protest or mourn a victim by stealing oxycontin, electronics, jewelry, and sneakers.
Finally, in response to several queries from readers following my twoarticles on Monday, I remind you that last year I published an article titled "An interesting look at urban defense". It contains links to several other articles on the subject. All are thought-provoking and worth reading.
Sheriff Judd said ... he does not believe Polk County residents were the ones creating problems.
He said there’s a difference between a protester and a rioter and rioting will not be accepted.
Judd said they received information that law enforcement would come under attack at 8 p.m. near Interstate 4 and Highway 27, but the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and Florida Highway Patrol were ready.
Judd said the Highway Patrol did a “marvelous job” helping stop the few who showed up for that alleged effort.
“We are going to hunt you down and lock you up if you engage in any criminal conduct,” Judd said.
Judd said there were rumblings on social media that rioters planned to bring violence into the neighborhoods of Polk County.
“I would tell them, if you value your life, they probably shouldn’t do that in Polk County. Because the people of Polk County like guns, they have guns, I encourage them to own guns, and they’re going to be in their homes tonight with their guns loaded, and if you try to break into their homes to steal, to set fires, I’m highly recommending they blow you back out of the house with their guns. So, leave the community alone,” Judd said.
The sheriff encouraged anyone wishing to express their First Amendment right to free speech to keep the focus on George Floyd, who Judd said was a victim who should be honored.
"All of that ugliness has taken away from what we're united about," the sheriff said. "We're united about the conduct that you saw with George [Floyd]."
I couldn't agree more. As I said right at the start of this rioting, I'll gladly join any street protest or demonstration against the way George Floyd met his death. It cries out for judicial action, and it seems that action is being taken. However, that's no excuse for rioting - particularly pre-planned, organized riots such as those we're currently seeing.
A riot is no longer a protest: it's thuggery, looting, mayhem, anarchy and chaos. Peaceful protests and demonstrations are lawful, and as such are protected by the First Amendment. Riots are criminal, and are therefore prime candidates to be dealt with using the provisions of the Second Amendment. Any violence offered by rioters to citizens like you and I needs to be resisted to the utmost, right from the start.
One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that 'violence begets violence.' I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure - and in some cases I have - that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.
Well said, sir! It looks like Sheriff Judd got the message.
I have no problem with protests against the actions of police in Mr. Floyd's death. If I were living in or near Minneapolis, I'd take part in them! On the basis of video evidence, I have no hesitation in labeling it police malfeasance, at the very least. There should be (and I hope there will be) legal consequences for all concerned. However, when the protestors start behaving like thugs and criminals, that crosses a line just as clearly as the one the police crossed in dealing with Mr. Floyd. The protestors make themselves criminals too.
I can't understand how the city authorities in Minneapolis are allowing this anarchy to continue. In northern Texas, I know for sure that every small business would have its owner(s) and/or employees deployed outside with firearms in the event of similar trouble here - and they wouldn't hesitate to use their guns if necessary in defense of their property. They're entirely within their rights to do so. Many of their customers would join them to help out. However, that doesn't appear to be the case in Minneapolis, where business owners are cowering at home, relying on the police to protect their property - and the police are conspicuous by their absence.
This abdication of authority and responsibility seems to be a pattern in that part of the world, judging by earlier reports. It's a license for anarchy. Unless it's stopped, and the authorities do their job, Minneapolis may become - perhaps already is - ungovernable. The current behavior of its police force, letting the riots continue without actively moving to stop them, appears to be nothing less than an acknowledgment of that reality. I can only assume their behavior is the result of orders from the city authorities, which means that the latter are equally culpable.
If that's the case, I think - I hope! - that an increasing number of Minneapolis residents will take matters into their own hands, and start striking back at the anarchists and criminals and thugs who currently appear to rule their streets and business districts. If I were living there, I'd be among them. If police fail to keep the peace, then it's up to us to do so in our own neighborhoods and towns. If police have no duty to protect individual citizens, as the Supreme Court has ruled, then citizens most certainly have the right to protect themselves and their property. That's one of the primary justifications for the Second Amendment to the United States constitution.
If the authorities can't be trusted to stop this sort of anarchy, why should they be trusted to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, or business and commerce, or anything else? Right now, Minneapolis doesn't appear to have a city government at all. Will its residents do something about that at the next elections? I hope so . . . but as Joseph de Maistre famously said, every nation gets the government it deserves. I guess that applies to every city, too. I just can't figure out how Minneapolis became such a nasty place as to deserve the government it's got!
Contrary to what much of the mainstream news media is reporting, crime and violence appear to be on the increase in at least some larger cities. I'm hearing that from my contacts in law enforcement (who correctly predicted the supply shortage in illegal drugs that's currently driving up prices and reducing supply across the nation), and now it's emerging in some news reports as well.
The streets of Chicago may be largely empty as residents hunker down from coronavirus but some of the city's most deprived neighborhoods are still echoing to the sound of deadly gunfire and raucous partying.
While significant falls in crime have been one of the few positive side effects of lockdowns in much of the United States and elsewhere, they have barely made a dent in the homicide rate in Chicago, a city that has long recorded the most murders in the country.
Chicago police say 56 murders were committed in April despite statewide stay-at-home orders -- only a fraction lower than the 61 for the same month in 2019 -- while last weekend, the first of the new month, four people were killed and 46 others shot and wounded.
. . .
The West Side has some of the city's most crime-ridden neighborhoods and hundreds of people filled the streets there overnight Saturday into Sunday as revelers partied in defiance of stay-at-home orders.
. . .
Chicago police told AFP that they would not "speculate whether or not victims/offenders are abiding by the stay-at-home mandate."
This has turned into a national joke, freeing criminals (who have demonstrated a complete inability to live by the rules of a civilized society) upon an unsuspecting populace to "prevent" the spread of a virus. Has anyone seen the shooting and killing numbers for May?
I think SCC meant the April numbers, but I've no doubt that the May figures will illustrate an ongoing trend.
The city’s largest police union is demanding cops get “out of the social distancing enforcement business,” while slamming city officials for “releasing criminals,” “discouraging proactive policing,” and leaving subways “in chaos.”
. . .
[Police Benevolent Association president Patrick] Lynch added that the politicians are “still watering down our laws, releasing real criminals and discouraging proactive enforcement of fare evasion and quality of life issues.”
“As a result, our subways are in chaos and we have hero nurses getting mugged on their way to our hospitals,” he said, referring to a nurse who had her phone torn out of her hand in Times Square on April 26. “As the weather heats up and the pandemic continues to unravel our social fabric, police officers should be allowed to focus on our core public safety mission. If we don’t, the city will fall apart before our eyes.”
By releasing so many thousands of criminals from jails and prisons, in the name of slowing the coronavirus infection rate, the authorities are simply increasing the pressure of crime on the street. Those released have no jobs to which to return - most employers are still shut down - and little prospect of getting any money in the short term from overloaded bureaucratic social assistance departments and networks. How do you think they're going to get money for their needs? You guessed it. They'll go back to what they do best - crime.
An interesting twist is that some black community leaders and influencers are now urging their followers to consider arming themselves against racist crimes by the white community. The self-titled "Charlamagne tha God" is one of them.
Sunday on MSNBC, radio host Charlamagne tha God encouraged blacks to buy a gun to protect themselves against “white ISIS” amid the Ahmaud Arbery controversy, who was allegedly killed by two men, Gregory and Travis McMichael, in Georgia on February 23.
Charlamagne tha God said, “My thoughts are rest in peace and condolences to his family. I wish that brother had a gun on him while he was jogging to defend himself against those thugs, those goons, those terrorists. I call them vanilla ISIS. That’s what I call them. They hunted him down like he was a deer. I would tell my brothers and sisters to buy a legal firearm and learn how to use it to protect yourself and your family. I am, and I think when you are a black person in America, owning a legal firearm is a form of self-care. That’s my thoughts on that. I wish he had a gun on him while jogging. I would much rather see him in prison fighting for his freedom as opposed to being in a casket right now.”
I don't disagree with him, but not on racial grounds. I'd like everybody, regardless of race, age, sex, creed, color or anything else, to be armed, trained, and able to defend themselves against criminal attack. That would deter many criminals, while at the same time allowing police to focus on their primary task. Robert Heinlein's famous dictum that "An armed society is a polite society" is as true today as it's ever been.
In New York City, it appears that more and more law-abiding citizens see it that way, too.
With thousands of cops out sick, cocky criminals on the loose, and people running out of money for food and rent because of COVID-19, the Rosario sisters of Staten Island want to arm themselves for what they fear could be a coming crime surge ... But New Yorkers are shut out, with the Empire State one of only five states where gun stores have closed, despite recent guidelines issued by the Department of Homeland Security saying they should be considered essential business.
And forget about even applying for a firearm permit in NYC; the NYPD has closed its licensing office.
. . .
High-profile crimefighters past and present also foresee a long, hot, criminal summer.
“It’s going to be every man for himself again,” said Curtis Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels in the infamous summer of 1977, when Son of Sam was on the loose.
“The wealthy see the plywood going up on the Madison Avenue shops and think riots,” he said. “But even if the criminals come to Park Avenue, rich people will buy themselves protection. It’s Park Avenue in Brooklyn we should worry about.
“The thugs feel the fear out there. They see cops aren’t getting out of their squad cars. That’s when bad stuff happens.”
. . .
Bernie Kerik, the police boss during 9/11, remembered how crime also dropped for three weeks after the attacks — then it returned and spiked.
“This is different and could be worse,” Kerik said. “If this shutdown continues through May, it’ll drive people into poverty. Many won’t qualify for government programs or unemployment. These people have to feed their families. Meanwhile, the criminals are emboldened.”
I think we're going to see this problem escalate all through this summer. I hope and pray I'm wrong . . . but reliable, not-politically-correct indicators suggest that I'm not. We'll see. Just in case, please be careful out there.
Police in Raleigh, North Carolina, have done themselves no favors by enforcing a clearly, unquestionably unconstitutional order. Here are a couple of excerpts from a Twitter thread discussing the matter.
Every citizen of this State owes paramount allegiance to the Constitution and government of the United States, and no law or ordinance of the State in contravention or subversion thereof can have any binding force.
Sec. 7. Suspending laws.
All power of suspending laws or the execution of laws by any authority, without the consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights and shall not be exercised.
In other words, according to North Carolina's own Constitution, that State's governor had no authority to ban public protests, because such protests (i.e. the right to "peaceably assemble") are themselves protected by the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States. What's more, there was no consent given to, and no prior authorization of, his order by "the representatives of the people".
That makes the actions of the Raleigh Police Department prima facie illegal and unconstitutional. Raleigh PD, what happened to "protect and serve"? You're protecting the bejeesus out of an illegal order!!! In doing so, you're ignoring the Constitutional rights of your own citizens!
... that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
There was (and is) no expiration date on that oath. It binds me still. Did members of the Raleigh Police Department swear a similar oath, or make a similar promise? If so, congratulations, officers. You are now forsworn.
The same insanity is visible in Michigan, and California, and every other state where jackbooted thugs (in the guise of politicians and bureaucrats) are requiring their law enforcement agencies and officers to impose and enforce blatantly unconstitutional (and therefore illegal) orders.
The question is, what will happen to citizens who stand up for their Constitutional rights, and refuse to allow anyone to ride rough-shod over them? I certainly will, if push comes to shove; and I will not allow officers to treat me as a criminal when it is, in fact, their enforcement of unconstitutional orders and ordinances that is clearly and prima facie illegal. Do I expect officers to acknowledge that, and back down? I hope some will, but I'm sure many won't - because for many of them (clearly including Raleigh PD), to judge by their uncomplaining acceptance of such edicts, the Constitution is so much toilet paper.
That's what comes of ignoring and/or minimizing the importance of civics and US history in their education, both as children and as police candidates. In particular, they've clearly never heard of Marbury v. Madison, where the Supreme Court of the United States ruled:
Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.
. . .
Thus, the particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written Constitutions, that a law repugnant to the Constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.
Marbury v. Madison therefore elevates the US Constitution, and that of North Carolina as well, over any edict by the Governor of that state, as well as any law passed by its legislature. Would someone kindly inform Raleigh PD of that little fact?
